1

The National War Labor Board of World War II: A Re-Interpretation

Ronald W. Schatz
Wesleyan University
October 28. 2012
In early 1942 William Leiserson felt sure that the National War Labor Board
would fail, with dreadful consequences for America and the Allies. Since Leiserson
chaired the National Labor Relations Board and the war against Germany, Japan, and
Italy was going badly, the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal sent reporters to
the speech Labor Relations and the War which he delivered to an audience of 1,000 at
City College of New York on Wednesday evening, February 18th. The news that day was
ghastly. Early in the morning, four Japanese aircraft carriers, commanded by the same
admiral who planned the attack on Pearl Harbor, shelled Darwin, Australia, one of the
few ports in the Pacific still in the Allies hands, sinking eight U.S. and Australian
warships, destroying twenty military aircraft and military and civilian facilities, and
killing or wounding more than 500 people. The same morning Japanese bombers escorted
by fighter planes attacked Surabaya, the largest naval and air port in the Dutch East
Indies, the third attack in two weeks. If the Dutch East Indies fell, the Lieutenant
Governor told reporters, Japan would next assault India or Russia to aid Germany.
Japanese forces also crossed the Bilin River, Britains last defense line before Rangoon,
the capitol of Burma, that day, and six Japanese divisions began moving onto Luzon, the
largest of the Philippine islands, and Timor.
Meanwhile, German submarines torpedoed Allied oil tankers and refineries off
the coasts of Aruba and Venezuela and sank a massive American oil tanker off the coast
of Virginia. It was the eighteenth German attack on American vessels off the Atlantic

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Coast since the U.S. entered the war. 1 By this point Nazi and fascist regimes and
compliant neutrals controlled all of continental Europe; the Wehrmact had Leningrad
under siege; and Rommels Afrika Korps was pressing toward Alexandria. The Soviets
had already lost the bulk of their arable land and much of their industrial plants to the
Germans; the British chancellery was penniless; and the U.S., which had a smaller army
than Belgiums in 1940 and no consequential air force, had only begun to re-arm.
Could the U.S., British, and Soviet governments recover and defeat the Axis
powers? Would Stalin sue for peace as Lenin had in 1918? No one could be certain but
because the U.S. and their Allies armed forces depended on American industry and
union-management relations remained rocky, victory hinged in considerable part on the
National War Labor Board. Could that new agency stabilize American unions and
companies?
Leiserson was convinced that the War Labor Board would fall flat. Franklin
Roosevelts decision to allow the Board to evaluate each case on its merits ensured
failure. Although labor and business leaders pledged to not call strikes or lockout
workers, the large majority of employers in America still insisted on maintaining an
open shop in their operations, a stance utterly unacceptable to union leaders, who
insisted on 100% union membership wherever they had contracts. None of the corporate
executives who Roosevelt invited to the Presidential Labor-Management Conference
after Japan attacked Pearl Harbor and Clark Field would accept that demand, not even
1

Base an Inviting Target, New York Times, Feb. 5, 1942, p. 3; Warships of United Nations Reported
Hit by Japanese Aircraft, ibid., Feb. 7, 1942, p. 2; Foe, in Singapore, Is at Crossroads, ibid., Feb. 16,
1942, p. 4; Japanese Closing Pincers in Java, ibid., Feb. 18, 1942, p. 1; The War Summarized, ibid.,
Feb. 19, 1942, p. 1; Rain of Bombs Mark Drive on M`Arthur and Refugees, ibid.; Bombers Chase UBoats Off Aruba; Total Tanker Toll in Area Is Four, ibid.; Nazis Speed Up War Production, ibid.;
Tanker Wrecked Off U.S. East Coast, ibid.; Douglas Lockwood, Australias Pearl Harbor: Darwin,
1942 (1966); http://naa.gov.au/collection/fact-sheets/fs195.aspx.

3
those whose own firms dealt with unions, yet the tight labor market strengthened the
union leaders bargaining hand.
Could this clash be resolved? If not, how could America produce the weapons and
materiel the American, British, and Soviet armed forces needed to defeat the Axis
powers? Roosevelt salvaged the December 1941 conference by terming the employers
and union leaders no-strike/no-lockout pledges and their promise to co-operate with the
National War Labor Board a triumph, but Leiserson was not fooled. There is no
essential difference between the National Defense Mediation Board which had collapsed
in November 1941 and the new Board, he told the audience. One was a mediation board
that arbitrated; the other is an arbitration board that mediates. The problem is that the
administration had given the new War Labor Board no guiding wage policy or unionshop policy on which to base its decisions. Decisions . . . will appear and, in fact, are
likely to be arbitrary and capricious, Leiserson argued. Production for the military will
be delayed unless broad principles on union membership and wages are determined in
advance, he warned. It seems rather strange to leave the determination of such crucial
national issues to an arbitration board designed to make awards in particular cases.
Leiserson called on the President to re-convene the December 1941 conference of labor
and management leaders. If they refused to compromise, the Congress must act
promptly and drastically, for the problems are too big and too crucial for the National
War Labor Board to solve. 2
Leisersons remarks attracted considerable attention, with the Washington Post,
the Los Angeles Times, and the Chicago Tribune, in addition to the New York Times and

William M. Leiserson, Diagnosis of War Labor Policy, reprinted in Labor Relations Reference Manual,
vol. 9 (1943), pp. 927-31; Leiserson Expects Storm for NWLB, New York Times, Feb. 19, 1942, p. 12;

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the Wall Street Journal, running stories about the speech. Most students of the problem
agreed with Dr. Leiserson, the New York Times senior Washington correspondent
Arthur Krock commented several days later. 3 Yet rather than following the advice of the
nations most senior mediator, the President let the National War Labor Board settle
wage rates, union membership, and virtually every other dispute between labor and
capital.
The decision proved wise. Within six months the National War Labor Board
settled the open-shop battle, decided on wage-rate guidelines that held for the wars
duration, and sent out their young staff officers to industrial centers where they set up
mediation and arbitration systems that kept days lost to strikes and wage inflation to
levels far lower than in 1918, when its precursor, also named the National War Labor
Board, had tried to do the same.
Partly for that reason, and partly because former members of the Boards staff
such as Benjamin Aaron, John Dunlop, and Irving Bernstein became prominent
professors of labor history, labor law, and labor economics after the war, the War Labor
Board received little criticism for many years. Most academics agreed with Charles C.
Killingsworth, a NWLB mediator who became director of the Labor and Industrial
Relations Center at Michigan State University, who declared in 1954 that the Boards
performance had been remarkably successful. 4

Leiserson Expects Storms for NWLB, New York Times, Feb. 19, 1942, p. 12; William M. Leiserson,
Diagnosis of War Labor Policy, reprinted in Labor Relations Reference Manual, vol. 9 (Washington,
D.C.: Bureau of National Affairs, 1943), pp. 927-31; Arthur Krock, War Labor Board Turns to Test on
Closed Shop, New York Times, Feb. 22, 1942, E3; Storm Ahead, Leiserson Warns, Washington Post,
Feb. 19, 1942, p. 9; Leiserson Looks to Congress for War Pay Policy, Chicago Tribune, Feb. 19, 1942, p.
25; National Wage Policy Forecast: Closed Shop Problem Too Large for Board to Solve, Says
Leiserson, Los Angeles Times, Feb. 19, 1942, p. 6.
4
Charles C. Killingsworth, review of War Labor Boards in the Field,in Journal of Political Economy, vol.
62, no. 5 (Oct. 1954), pp. 459-60. For other postwar assessments, see Joseph G. Rayback, A History of

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Opinion changed completely during the 1970s and 1980s, when younger, radical
labor historians, critical legal theorists, and radical economists such as Nelson
Lichtenstein, Katherine Stone, Karl Klare, and Staughton Lynd, and an older independent
radical Martin Glaberman produced a flurry of articles, books, and pamphlets arguing
that rulings issued by the War Labor Board and the arbitrator trained by the Board had
extremely deleterious effects for American workers and unions. Not only did the Boards
decisions prevent workers from winning major wage increases and acquiring greater
power on the shop floor during the war, when their bargaining power was at its peak, but
the grievance-and-arbitration systems established in accordance to the Boards orders
remained in place after the war, suppressing worker militancy, penalizing union members
who struck in violation of contract terms, and depriving workers of access to the civil
courts. The revisionists blamed the War Labor Board and the industrial pluralism
promoted by its former staffers for the decline of the American labor movement in the
latter 20th century. 5
The revisionists interpretation was widely acclaimed by labor historians and
radical professors of law and economists, and has seldom been criticized. 6 I was

American Labor (1959), pp. 378-85; Irving Bernstein, Americans in Depression and War, in A History of
the American Worker (1983), pp. 178-85; Thomas R. Brooks, Toil and Trouble: A History of American
Labor (1971), pp. 198-208; George W. Taylor, Labors No Strike Pledge: A Statistical View, in
Yearbook of American Labor: Vol. 1 War Labor Policies (1945), ed. Colston E. Warner, et al., pp. 137-42.
5
See, for example, Nelson Lichtenstein, Fighting the No-Strike Pledge: CIO Politics in World War II,
Radical America, vol. 9, nos. 4-5 (July-Aug. 1975), pp. 49-76; ________, Ambiguous Legacy: The Union
Security Problem During World War II, Labor History, vol. 18, no. 2 (1977), pp. 214-238; _______,
Labors War at Home: The CIO in World War II (1982, 2003); Katherine van Wezel Stone, The Structure
of Post-war Labor Relations, Yale Law Review, vol. 90, no. 7 (1981), pp. 1509-1580; Martin Glaberman,
Wartime Strikes: The Struggle against the No-Strike Pledge in the UAW during World War II (1980);
Staughton Lynd, Government without Rights: The Labor Law Vision of Archibald Cox, Industrial
Relations and Law during World War II (1998); Karl E. Klare, Critical Theory and Labor Relations Law,
The Politics of Law: A Progressive Critique, ed. David Kairys (1982), 65-88; James B. Atleson, Labor and
the Wartime State: Labor Relations and Law during World War II (1998).
6
The principal dissenter was Howell John Harris, whose essay The snare of liberalism? Politicians,
bureaucrats, and the shaping of federal labour relations policy in the United States, ca. 1915-1947,

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originally impressed by their arguments too. 7 Yet the analysis was full of holes, as I
discovered when I began to explore the subject in depth. If union leaders had pursued the
ultra-militant strategy during the world war favored by Lichtenstein and Glaberman, the
unions officials would have been arrested, the members drafted into the Army, and labor
organizations crushed, just as the Roosevelt administration had done when the workers
making fighter planes at North American Aviation went on strike in June 1941. Many
members of the Congress became enraged when John L. Lewis called 53,000 miners at
coal companies owned by the steel companies out on strike in November 1941. After
calming down momentarily after Pearl Harbor was attacked, public hostility to unions
and strikers welled again, as the triumph of conservatives in the November 1942
Congressional elections demonstrated. By 1943 the preponderance of the public, in fact a
majority of union members, favored laws banning strikes, supported laws against
featherbeddings, and thought the government had the right to tell worker where to work
and at work. When John L Lewis led a strike of 400,000 coal miners in June 1943, the
Congress passed the Smith-Connally Act which outlawed strikes in any company making
war-related products, empowered the president to seize the company if the workers
nonetheless walked out, provided fines, imprisonment, or both for any person who
encouraged a strike, slow-down, or lockout, and prohibited contributions by unions or
employers to politicians. Roosevelt vetoed the law, requesting the power to draft strikers

appeared in Shop floor bargaining and the state: Historical and comparative perspectives, ed. Steven
Tolliday and Jonathan Zeitlin (1985), pp. 148-91. Also see Howell John Harris, The Right to Manage:
Industrial Relations Policies of American Business in the 1940s (1982), pp. 47-58.
7
Ronald W. Schatz, From Commons to Dunlop: rethinking the field and theory of industrial relations,
Industrial democracy in America: The ambiguous promise, ed. Nelson Lichtenstein and Howell John Harris
(1993), pp. 103-04, 106.

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instead. However the Congress overrode the veto. 8 From far weakening the unions, the
War Labor Board tried to protect them from conservative politicians fury.
The Little Steel formula adopted by the Board in 1942 did not prevent workers
earnings from rising during the war, as many radical writers claimed at the time and
subsequently. On the contrary, workers earnings peaked during World War II, and not
only because of long mandatory hours on the job. The Board gave its staff wiggle-room
in the form of freedom to rectify wage inequities and maladjustments and adjustment
of substandard standards of living, the latter referring primarily to African-Americans,
Latinos, and white women. The Board also gave leeway in workplaces where labor
shortages were greatest, and occasionally made exceptions when unions were most
militant. Since the Congress did not impose a labor draft or other legislation to control
labor migration, millions of working men and women were able to move from poorlypaid work to higher-paying jobs in or around factories and ports. And while the Board did
not support new company-paid pensions or health insurance during the war, it did protect
existing plans and, when the Steelworkers struck the leading steel companies in 1949, the
Steel Industry Board chaired by NLWB alumnus Carroll R. Daugherty supported
company-paid pensions and social insurance. This ruling became the norm in unionized
sectors of the U.S. economy. As a result of the decisions of these Boards, the tightening
labor markets, and the increasing strength of unions, differentials between wage workers
and wealthier Americans narrowed significantly during the 1940s. 9
8

George H. Gallup, The Gallup Poll: Public Op9inion, 1935-1971 (1972), vol. 1, pp. 307, 320-21, 335,
363, 383, 392, 395; Text of the Anti-Strike Bill as Finally Adopted by the Senate and House, New York
Times, June 13, 1943, p. 40; F.D.R. May Use Draft to End Coal Strike Los Angeles Times, June 24, 1943,
pp. 1,5; President Seeks Power to Induct Men in All Federal Plants, New York Times, June 24, 1943, pp.
1, 15; Government Gets Power on Strikes, New York Times, June 26, 1943, p. 2.
9
Martin E. Segal, Health and Welfare Funds, Proceedings of New York University Second Annual
Conference on Labor: Trends in Collective Bargaining and Labor Law, ed. Emanuel Stein (1949), pp. 258-

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The claim that grievance-and-arbitration systems instituted by the War Labor
Board weakened the unions and workers is equally dubious. The opposite is closer to the
truth. Grievers, as shop stewards in the United Steelworkers of America were called,
regarded the unions contract with the manufacturers as an invaluable tool to protect the
members and increase their power vis--vis foremen, supervisors, and higher-ranking
managers. Union-management contracts invariably contained ambiguous language and
the local unions, backed by the head of the grievance department at the national office,
won arbitration cases that saved thousands of jobsmost famously Section 2-B of the
Steelworkers contract with U.S. Steel. 10 The same occurred once unions organized public
workers, as the governor of Wisconsin, Scott Walker, furiously protested last year. There
is no doubt, as the revisionists asserted, that union membership as a proportion of the
U.S. workforce has declined steadily since the Korean War. However, that phenomenon
was not unique to this country. Union membership also declined in France, the United
Kingdom, Japan, and Australia between 1955 and 2003. Aside from several small
northern European nations and the Republic of Korea, the most outstanding exception is
Canada, when union density rose significantly in the 1980s. Yet contract language and
grievance-and-arbitration procedures at many firms in Canada and the U.S. One has to

29ff; Jennifer Klein, For All These Rights: Business, Labor, and the Shaping of Americas Public-Private
Welfare State (2003), pp. 180-85; The Termination Report of the National War Labor Board, vol. 1
(Washington, D.C.: GPO, n.d.), p. 384; Steven A. Sass, The Promise of Private Pensions: The First
Hundred Years (1997), pp. 132-37; Claudia Goldin and Robert A. Margo, The Great Compression: The
Wage Structure in the United States at Mid-Century, Quarterly Journal of Economics, 107: 1 (Feb. 1992),
pp. 1-34; Simon Kuznets, Shares of Upper Income Groups in Income ad Savings (1953), chs. 2-3; Paul
Krugman, The Conscience of a Liberal (2007), pp. 51-53.
10
For excellent discussions of this point, see Jack Metzgers Striking Steel: Solidarity Remembered (2000),
pp. 26, 34-36, 45-53ff; James B. Rose, The Struggle over Management Rights at U.S. Steel, 1946-1960: A
Reassessment of Section 2-B of the Collective Bargaining Agreement, Business History Review, 72:3
(1998), 446-477.

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cast a wider net to explain the different histories of industrial relations in Canada and the
U.S. 11
Finally, the revisionists who wrote about the War Labor Board erred grievously
by narrowly focusing on the domestic scene, as if the world was not aflame. No one
should forget that Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan nearly defeated the Allies. Even
after suffering serious setbacks, neither government wavered or despaired; their troops
remained loyal, as did their generals, with a single exception in Germany in 1944; and
they never lost domestic support.
Two factors explain the Allies ultimate victory: first, the German and Japanese
governments were even worse than their counterparts in Washington, London, and
Moscow at coordinating their strategies; and, second, although the Allies started from far
behind, they ultimately acquired an overwhelming advantage in weapons, particularly in
the air and on the sea. 12 Yet the Allies could not have reached superiority in armaments
without the War Labor Board whose regional officers guided company managers and
union officials toward collaboration. Would American workers and unions better off if
the union officers or the rank-and-file had fought the Board tooth and nail?
When his influential 1982 study of C.I.O. unions during World War II, Labors
War at Home, was reprinted in 2003, Nelson Lichtenstein reversed his original analysis.
In the early years of the twenty-first century, the potential payoff of the corporatist
11

Clara Chang and Constance Sorrentino, Union Membership Statistics in 12 Countries, Monthly Labor
Review, vol. 114, no. 12 (December 1991), pp. 46-53; Jelle Visser, Union Membership Statistics in 24
countries, ibid., January 2006, pp. 38-49; Noah M. Meltz, Labour Movements in Canada and the United
States: Are They Really That Different? paper presented for the MIT/Union Conference, July 19-21, 1983,
Centre for Industrial Relations, July 1983; Seymour Martin Lipset and Noah M. Meltz, The Paradox of
American Unionism: Why Americans Like Unions More Than Canadians Do But Join Much Less (2004),
ch. 2; Lipset, American Exceptionalism: A Double-Edged Sword (1996), ch. 3.
12
For explanation for the wars outcome, see, inter alia, Gerhard L. Weinberg, World in the Balance:
Behind the Scenes of World War II (1981), pp. 1-52; ibid., A World at War: A Global History of World War
II (1994), chs. 9, 10 and conclusion; Richard Overy, Why the Allies Won (1996).

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bargain of the World War II era looks much better than it once did, he wrote in the
introduction of the new edition, adding that if the industrial relations systems put in
place in the 1940s was so hostile to working-class interests, then why have almost all
employers resisted it? 13
Lichtenstein deserved praise for being willing to re-consider his original view,
yet prefatory remarks in an otherwise-identical volume are not sufficient. If the impact of
the War Labor Board was as great as the revisionists maintained (and I concur on that
point) but their original interpretations were erroneous, then a new, more accurate reading
of that history is needed. How did that Board actually operate? How did the American
industries produce such extraordinary output despite union and managements animosity?
How did the Boards policies affect workers and unions during the war? And what was
the long-term effect of those polices? Although I cannot probe into all of them, these are
the issues I will address today.
The best way to understand the Board is to look closely at its vice-chairman
George W. Taylor and his protgs. Although the War Labor Boards chairman, William
H. Davis, chaired the meetings and spoke for the Board at Congressional hearings, other
federal agencies, and in press conferences, Taylor wrote the Boards most significant
rulings, recruited and trained the staffers who did the bulk of the work, and imparted his
distinctive technique for resolving conflicts.
Born in 1901, George Taylor was a native of Kensington, a section of Philadelphia,
and home to more than 30,000 textile workers, their families, and 400 wool, cotton, yarn,
and carpet manufacturing firms, shipyards, and other work sites. They were squeezed into
row houses in six wards northeast of downtown Philadelphia. Kensington was nicknamed
13

Nelson Lichtenstein, Labors War at Home: The C.I.O. in World War II (2003), p. xii.

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Little England, for many of the residents or their parents were immigrants from
Manchester, Nottingham, and other towns in northern England.
Kensington had a century-long history of worker violence directed at employers, or
other workersmost hauntingly, the weeklong violent battle between Protestants and
Catholics in 1844. When the Manufacturers Associations refused their demand for shorter
hours in June 1903, Kensington textile workers stopped work en masse. When urban transit
workers struck in 1910, they received widespread support from Kensington workingmen
and women. Strikers and their friends in Kensington pushed the trolley cars driven by scabs
off the tracks and beat the blacklegs. A succession of other strikes followed, including a
series of successful walkouts for wage increases and union recognition in 1917, 1919, and
1921. However the balance shifted in 1921, when manufacturers locked workers out, to
regain ground lost. More futile strikes occurred in 1929, 1931, and 1934. 14
Thus, from his childhood onward, George Taylor watched strikers, strikebreakers,
company guards, and cops confronting each other in the streetsbrutal battles including not
only stone throwing and fist fights but homicides as well.15 Yet while Taylor grew up in
proletarian Kensington, he wasnt quite of it, for his parents were Quakers and his family
was better off than most residents there. At the turn of the 20th century 15,000 Quakers lived
in Philadelphia. However, few of them lived in Kensington. The vast majority of Quakers
resided in Germantown, Mount Airy, or other quiet, tree-lined sections of Philadelphia.

14

David Montgomery, The Shuttle and the Cross: Weavers and Artisans in the Kensington Riots of 1844,
Journal of Social History, 5:4 (Summer 1972), 411-46; Philip Scranton and Walter Licht, Work Sights
(Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1986), pp. 62-65; Edward Levinson, I Break Strikes! The
Technique of Pearl L. Bergoff (1935), ch. 6: Strike Leaders Facing Defeat: Philadelphia Labor Chiefs Fail
to Paralyze the Citys Industries, New York Times, March 8, 1910, p. 2.
15
Edward B. Shils, Introduction, Industrial Peacemaker, p. 2.

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Georges parents Harry and Anna Taylor were exceptions. A native-born American
of English ancestry, Harry was a supervisor in the Orincodo Mills, a textile factory in
Kensington. He did well enough that Anna, an immigrant from Denmark, was able to
remain at home, keeping house. They lived in a section of Kensington nicknamed
Fishtown. One of Georges unclesprobably his fathers brother--owned a textile mill.
Harry and Anna assumed that George would follow the same path, becoming a manager in
one of Philadelphias innumerable textile or garment factories after graduating from
Frankford High School. However, the principal thought the studious, sensitive boy was
better suited for college. At his urging, George applied for and won a Mayors Scholarship.
He enrolled at the University of Pennsylvanias Wharton School of Business.
Taylor earned his bachelors degree in 1923, a Masters in Business Administration
in 1926, and his doctorate in economics in 1929, all at the University of Pennsylvania. After
receiving his B.A., George taught economics and business administration at Schuylkill (later
Albright) College in Reading, and coached the football team. After completing his
doctorate, he became a researcher at the Wharton School. He focused on employment trends
in the silk hosiery industry, a thriving new industry in Philadelphia and its environs. 16 After
several years he was appointed as an associate professor in the Industrial Relations
Department at Wharton. In 1931 the silk-hosiery manufacturers association and union hired
Taylor as their impartial chairman. He succeeded Paul Abelson, the teacher and arbitrator
who back in 1911 had co-authored the famous Protocols of Peace in the New York
garment industry with Louis Brandeis. In 1934 or 1935 Taylor was also hired as

16

George W. Taylor, Significant Post-War Changes in the Full-Fashioned Hosiery Industry (1929); ibid.,
The Full-Fashioned Hosiery Worker: His Changing Economic Status ( 1931).

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arbitration chairman for the Philadelphia local of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of
America and the citys mens clothing manufacturing association.17
A perceptive young man, son of a supervisor, reared in Little England, and
familiar with the Society of Friends method of resolving conflicts through listening to each
members opinions, Taylor could sympathize with both laborers and employers. Like nearly
all other employers in America in that era, the Quakers manufacturers of Philadelphia
adamantly opposed unions and strikes. In fact, some of Quaker manufacturers in the city
favored the death penalty for strike leaders. However, Quaker manufacturers of Philadelphia
differed from other employers because they rarely hired armed thugs to break strikes. They
found other, quiet but effective ways to prevent their workers from unionizing, strategies
adopted at the Wharton School. During the latter 1920s faculty at the school taught students
how to satisfy employees so as to make their unionization unattractive, recalled G. Allan
Dash, Jr., one of Taylors first students.18
George Taylor had a more positive attitude towards unions than many of his
colleagues and professors. Influenced by his experience in the Friends meeting and Paul
Abelson, he developed a distinctive way of resolving conflicts between union and company
representatives. In the early 20th century social reformers sharply distinguished between
mediation and arbitration. The job of a mediator, according to a 1918 report on the
17

Melvyn Dubofsky, George William Taylor, Dictionary of American Biography, Supplement Nine,
1971-1975, ed. Kenneth T. Jackson, et al. ( 1994), pp. 794-96; Industrial Peacemaker, pp. 1-2, 89; Shils,
George W. Taylor; Industrial Peacemaker, Monthly Labor Review, December 1995, pp. 29-30; Joseph H.
Willets, George William Taylor (1901-1972), American Philosophical Society, 1973, pp. 166-69.
18
National Academy of Arbitration, Oral History Project, The early days of labor arbitration as recalled
by: G. Allan Dash, Jr., Sylvester Garrett, John Day Larkin, Harry H. Platt, Ralph T. Seward, William E.
Simkin, 2nd ed. (1984), interview with G. Allan Dash, Jr. by Clare B. McDermott, p. 1.
For further discussion, see Philip S. Benjamin, The Philadelphia Quakers in the Industrial Age,
1865-1920 (1976), pp. 89-90ff; Howell John Harris, Bloodless Victories: The Rise and Fall of the Open
Shop in the Philadelphia Metal Trades, 1890-1940 (2000), ch. 8ff; Emory R. Johnson, The Wharton
School, 1881-1931 (1931); Steven A. Sass, The Pragmatic Imagination: A History of the Wharton School,
1881-1981 (1982), ch. 7.

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railroad industry, was to placate the disputants, to harmonize the differences . . . , and by
concessions from both sides through force of personality and tact effect an agreement
acceptable to the parties. Questions of justice, fairness, reasonableness, and
equity did not play a central part in this conception of mediation. The job of the
arbitrator was utterly different in the early 20th century. Arbitrators would listen to the
contending parties presentations and then issue an award. Like a judge considering
whether a law was unconstitutional, the railroad arbitrators decision must be based
some definite, accepted principle of reason. 19
Taylor rejected this disjuncture. [M]any judges in our courts hold conferences in
their chambers between representatives of the disputants to mediate a settlement of legal
claims. They may nevertheless have to decide the case and often do so with considerable
reluctance, he wrote in 1949. In my judgment there have been too many befuddled
attempts by arbitrators to reason mediation out of grievance arbitration. . . . [G]rievance
arbitration cannot be viewed exclusively as a `mediation process or a `judicial process.
There is no `either-or choice . . . because elements of both are inclusive. 20
Taylor spoke as little as possible when he presided over grievance arbitration
hearings, mostly posing questions that could lead participants to re-consider their views.
He was often successful. Fully one-third of the arbitration grievance cases that the FullFashioned Hosiery Workers of America and the Hosiery Manufacturers Association sent
to Taylor between 1931 and 1940 were formally labeled Settled Without Disagreement.
In other words, he did not issue an arbitration award in those cases. Instead, the parties
19

J. Noble Stockett, Jr., The Arbitral Determination of Railroad Wages (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1918),
p. xii.
20
George W. Taylor, Effectuating the Labor Contract Through Arbitration,The Profession of Labor
Arbitration: Selected Papers from the First Seven Annual Meetings of the National Academy of Arbitrators,
1948-1954, ed. Jean T. McKelvey (1957), p. 22.

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representatives compromised after meeting with Taylor. In two-thirds of his arbitration
cases in the hosiery, Taylor did issue rulings. In some of those cases the two negotiators
for the parties had compromised after meeting with Taylor, but asked him to issue a ruling
as if it was his own decision in order to protect the company and/or union officials from
being criticized by their constituents for making concessions.
While the large majority of arbitrators sat above the union and company spokesmen,
Taylor sat at the same table as the contending parties to encourage discussion and
compromise. His protgs--Allan Dash, Clark Kerr, Lewis (Lew) Gill, William (Bill)
Simkin, Benjamin (Ben) Aaron, Sylvester (Syl) Garrett, John Dunlop, and othersfollowed
the same approach. This reflected Taylors Quaker upbringing. The hearing would include
the employee(s) who filed the grievance, the leader of the shop committee, the local
union leader, the superintendent in the department, at least one and often several
representatives of the particular company, and representatives of the national union and
the manufacturer or manufacturers association. He would begin each case by reading the
letter that he had received from the union or employer who had filed the grievance. A
representative of whichever side had filed the grievancenormally, the union--would
speak next and present their argument. A representative of the other side would then
reply.
After the opening presentations, the parties were free to question or counter the
others claims. If the negotiators or employees hesitated, Taylor would pose a question to
start the dialogue. There were no stenographers in hearings which Taylor ran, and only
occasionally did he even take notes. Instead, he would listen to the trade unionists and
employers, trying to figure out their motivations and real objective, which were often not the

15

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same as their stated demands. If a grievance case was highly contentious, discussions often
descended into shouting, swearing, and denunciations. A spokesman for one side or the
othermore often than not, the union manmight start personally attacking someone from
the other side. They might actually be mad or, more often, feigning rage for tactical reasons.
Taylor did not object, nor complain about obscenities. However, he was more apt to
intervene when arguments became raucous, and would not permit personal attacks on others
in the room.
Taylor tried to develop personal relationships with the union and employers
representatives. For that reason, he did not hold hearings at the Wharton School, lest the
visitors feel ill at-ease in that setting. Instead he rented an office downtown or the parties at
the Philadelphia Young Womens Christian Association, a favorite place for Socialists, to
which the Full-Fashioners Silk Hosiery Workers of Americas leaders belonged. If the cases
involved mechanical issues, Taylor or Dash or Bill Simkin, Penn graduates who succeeded
him as the Impartial Chairman in Philadelphia garment industries, met the parties at the
factory site.
The larger silk hosiery firms had factories in towns outside of Philadelphia, mainly
elsewhere in eastern Pennsylvania, New Jersey, or southern New England. When they were
handling grievances out-of-town, Taylor, Simkin, or Dash traveled with the union and
employer negotiator. [W]e would go on hosiery cases . . . in somebodys car
(Management, Labor and the Chairman), and we would stay in the same motel, Dash
recalled. We would have drinks and dinner together and maybe a `bull session. It was a
very close relationship. 21 The 1930s were tough times, and all saved money by traveling
together. They took turns at the wheel, stayed in the same locale, drank, played cards, and
21

The early days of labor arbitration as recalled by: G. Allan Dash, Jr., et al. (1984), p. 24.

16

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talked about the grievance case or sports, the weather, politics, the economy, women, or
whatever subject came to mind. Naturally some of these men became friends, so much so
that they and their wives would socialize with couples from the other side of the table.
Taylor continued working in that way when he resolved disputes between the
Philadelphia branches of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America and suit
manufacturers. Good working relationships formed in both industries, with the
negotiators tending to identify with each other as much with their counterparts in other
cities, other industries, or, in the case of the union reps, the workers. This did not prevent
the representatives from interpreting contract terms differently or arguing, sometimes
vehemently. Nonetheless, negotiators who travelled together could settle their disputes
more easily than strangers could, particularly if, as was usually the case, all were men.
Friendship is both cement and a lubricant, Simkin remarked. It binds people . . . it
eliminates or eases potential frictions. 22
Unlike his predecessors in the field of arbitration, George Taylor did not issue
one-sentence edicts. Instead, like the Philadelphia Society of Friends who produced
lengthy Rules of Discipline, his rulings resembled treatises. 23 In his awards, Taylor
carefully addressed each question raised by the parties in the hearings and underlying
concerns that he perceived. The employer was vulnerable to criticism from members of
the manufacturers association, to the board of directors, business partners, and
stockholders, or, if the firm was family-owned as was often the case in the garment
industry, from his mother, father, or siblings. The trade unionists were even more
exposed, since competition for positions inside the unions was rife. It did not matter
22

Ibid., p. 24 [RS: Locate the page number for Simkins remark.].

Rules of Discipline of the Yearly Meeting of Friends for Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, and the
Eastern Parts of Maryland (1903), pp. 11-15ff.
23

17

18
whether the union was conservative, Socialist, or Communist: trade unionists snapped at
each other. Consequently Taylor had to choose his words carefully.
Rather than issuing a ruling after a hearing closed, like other arbitrators did,
Taylor would write a preliminary opinion, show the draft to the union and manufacturers
associations officers, revise his draft, and, if he was not certain that he had found the
right expression, show the draft with the parties representatives again. He was sensitive
not only to the union and employers interests, but their needs and feelings as well.
Garment was a seasonal industry, and Taylor met the negotiators frequently, even weekly
during its busiest season, and personally handed out his written decisions. He made a
point of always speaking to the losing partys negotiator first. You must talk to the loser.
This is born out of the basic notion that its cold and cruel to pick up a piece of paper,
read that and thats your first notion of whats going to happen in that case. You must talk
to the loser, recalled Simkin. George used to operateand Ive tried to [also]on the
principle of as few surprises as possible. It might be a casual remark or if its a tough
case, youd sit down face to face, go over the whole business with the top representatives
of one side and explain the reason for ruling against them orally as well in addition to
write an opinion which would help sell the notion. 24
Union-management arbitration was different from other kinds of conflict resolution,
Taylor frequently observed. Unlike prosecutors and defendants in criminal cases, litigants in
civil cases, or employers who took disputes to commercial arbitration, the union and the
employer must still live and work together in an amicable way, if the business is to operate
efficiently . . . Consequently, he did not seek unconditional justice if his ruling would
24

The early days (1984), transcript of interview with William E. Simkin by Edgar (Ted) Jones, p. 4; Walter
J. Gershenfeld, Early Years: Grievance Arbitration, in Industrial Peacemaker, ed. Edward Shils, et al,
pp. 31-34.

18

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seriously damage bonds between the parties. Taylor tried to narrow the range of
difference and the extent of possible loss from an arbitrators ruling. He wanted
settlements that the representatives of both sides accept and could sell to their constituencies.
In all cases, the importance of the `consent to lose requires that arbitration be accepted
voluntarily by the partiers, he explained.25 For that reason he always processed grievances
quickly. Highly diligent, he wrote approximately 1,000 arbitration rulings in the hosiery
industry during the 1930s, and about 400 more cases were settled without decision, while
also arbitrating cases in the mens clothing industry, serving on federal agencies, and
teaching full time at the Wharton School.
Taylor often spoke of the parties representatives reaching a meeting of the
minds. That was his highest aspiration, and another transmitting of the Society of
Friends thinking to industrial relations. For that reason, Taylor refused to allow lawyers
to participate in grievance hearings he chaired. He was absolutely firm on that point.
Taylor and his protgs were extremely hostile to lawyers. The problem was not with any
particular attorney, but the legal profession itself. Lawyers intentionally sharpened
parties differences and doing their utmost to discredit their clients opponents. Taylor
had the opposite approach. His protgs at Penn and the War Labor Board followed his
lead. If you want the strict rules of evidence followed here[,] please get yourself a
judge, or get yourself an arbitrator trained in law But you dont want me because I know
very little about the rules of evidence, Allan Dash would say to union and company
negotiators. I just want all the facts because I think the decisions should be based on the

25

George W. Taylor, Industrial Peace Through Arbitration, draft of an article for the American
Arbitration Journal, October 1938, pp. 3-4, in Speeches and Articles by Dr. George W. Taylor, vol. 1,
1938-1950, Lippincott Library, University of Pennsylvania.

19

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facts, and not upon the skills of the advocates. 26 Taylor and his protgs also tried to
keep the union and employer representatives from acting like lawyers. The procedure of
examination, cross-examination, redirect, recross [sic], etc., those terms were never
used, remembered Dash, adding that I seldom dress[ed] in dark clothes for [grievance]
hearings to discourage the parties from treating me like a judge and adopting adversary
techniques. 27
A photo of Taylor in Business Week in 1941, when he was appointed as umpire for
General Motors and the United Auto Workers, shows a five-foot seven-inches-tall man with
a round, youthful face, wire-rim glasses, black hair greased straight-back as was the fashion
then, and a small mouth about to break into a smile. Other photos show Taylor with
twinkling eyes, a natural smile, and, on more than one occasion, laughing. 28 Experienced,
alert, assured, yet self-effacing, George Taylor had the rare gift, his former student
Lewis Gill recalled, for inspiring management and union leaders to have confidence in
their ability to make an effective contribution to the relationship. 29 He was too
pragmatic and modest to theorize, but after the war Taylors former staff called his
technique med/arb. Taylor and the young economists and law professors he trained
melded together two methods of conflict resolution previously considered incompatible. 30
From the beginning, the sharpest issue confronting the National War Labor
Board was the union leaders demand for 100% union membership in workplaces, a
26

Transcript of McDermotts interview with Dash, pp. 40, 43.

Transcript of Dash in NAA, The Early Years, pp. 9, 42.
28
"Umpire for G.M.," Business Week, no. 594 (January 18, 1941), p. 52; Shils, et al., Industrial Peacemaker,
pp. 123-30.
29
Lewis M. Gill remarks at Symposium: An Oral History of the National War Labor Board and Critical
Issues in the Development of Modern Grievance Arbitration, Case Western Reserve Law Review, vol. 39
(1989), p. 549. [Emphasis in original transcript]
30
Gladys W. Gruenberg, Labor Peacemaker: The Life and Work of Father Leo C. Brown, S.J. (1981), p.
41ff; Bruce Kaufman, Reflections on Six Decades in Industrial Relations: An Interview with John
Dunlop, Industrial and Labor Relations Review, 55:2 (January 2002), p. __ . [RS: page number needed]
27

20

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position anathema to the vast majority of American employers, even the relatively liberal
chief executive appointed by Roosevelt to that Board. Employers insisted on the open
shop, which they defined as the freedom to employ any worker they wish and the
workers freedom to remain outside of unions if they so preferred. In practice, however,
open shop meant exclusion of union members and employees sympathetic to unions
and creation of lists of names of pro-union workers who no employer should hire. This
question had been the burning issue in the United States since at least 1905, when the
National Association of Manufacturers began a ferocious open-shop drive against unions.
It came to a head in the steel industry in the 1930s and early 1940s. More
Americans worked in steel mills than in any other industry except agriculture; U.S. Steel
was the largest corporation in the United States; the United Steelworkers of America was
the nations largest union; and the Steelworkers president Philip Murray was also the
president of the Congress of Industrial Organization. The steel corporations had
ferociously fought union organization for a half-century, defeating organizing drives in
1903, 1919, and 1934. Although U.S. Steel and Jones & Laughlins managements signed
a contract with the Steel Workers Organizing Committee, the predecessor of the United
Steelworkers of America, in 1937, the contract terms were imprecise and worker support
for the union was so weak that the union had to put up picket lines outside the mills to
force employees to pay dues. Besides U.S. Steel, which produced approximately 40% of
the industry, the large steel companies were Bethlehem Steel, Republic Steel, Inland
Steel, and Youngstown Sheet and Tube, which were commonly referred to as Little
Steel. Together those corporations employed 175,000 blue-collar workers in 1940. The
management of those corporations refused to sign contracts at all until 1941. When the

21

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union called a strike at Republic Steel, Youngstown Sheet & Tube, Bethlehem Steel, and
Inland Steel in spring 1937, the companies obtained court injunctions against picketers. A
dozen strikers picketing outside Republic Steel mills in South Chicago and Mansillon,
Ohio were killed; others were wounded.
After the United States went to war, the Steelworkers union, like all other unions
affiliated with the CIO and AFL, pledged not to call any strikes. To do otherwise was
inconceivable in the aftermath of Pearl Harbor. Yet the pledge put the union officials in a
bind, for, if they could not threaten a strike, why would a hostile management make
concessions? And since blue-collar employees would receive the union benefits whether
they were members or not, why should they pay dues? But the unions needed large staffs
to operate, and thus steady stream of dues from the members. The unions leaders were
particularly concerned about thousands of new employees, many of them women, black,
or white migrants from the countryside who had not belonged to a union before and
frequently were hostile to labor organizations.
Consequently, the Steelworkers negotiators demanded that the Little Steel
companies sign union shop contractsthat is, provisions which would require all bluecollar employees at those mills become members of the union, with dues subtracted
automatically from their pay. They proposed the same provision to U.S. Steel
management. They also demanded wage increases of $1 per day for workers at those
firms.
When U.S. Steel and the Little Steel management rejected the Steelworkers
demand for union security, as the union termed their demand, the War Labor Boards
chairman Will Davis proposed a compromise which he called maintenance-of-

22

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membership. Under that compromise, newly-hired workers would have a choice
whether to join the union or not. If they did join, they would be obliged to remain duespaying members until the contract expired, at which point all members would again have
the choice whether to continue as members or not. That would guarantee steady stream of
dues for the union while satisfying the managements demand of freedom of choice for
employees. The corporations also rejected this idea. This company is opposed to it [a
maintenance-of-membership plan] or any other form of closed shop, no matter what it is
called nor how it is camouflaged, Republic Steel management declared. Inland Steels
president decried maintenance-of-membership as simply a device for bringing about a
closed shop. . . .. [I]t furnishes no means of protecting employees from being coerced into
signing up, and once they have signed up they cannot withdraw. The maintenance-ofmembership proposal was a new smoke screen . . . and entirely unacceptable, the
president of Bethlehem Steel declared, adding The real question before this country
today is national security, not union security. 31 When negotiations between the
Steelworkers and Bethlehem Steel, Inland Steel, and Republic Steel broke down in early
February 1942, the Labor Department sent the case to the NWLB. In both labor and
employer circles the War Labor Boards action is looked forward to as perhaps the
biggest test, the New York Times reported. 32
Throughout that winter and spring of 1942 George Taylor tried to persuade labor
officials and business leaders to accept the maintenance-of-membership compromise. In
early May 1942, for example, he spoke to the annual convention of the Pennsylvania
Federation of Labor in Scranton, the heart of anthracite coal mining. He titled his speech

31
32

3 Steel Companies Fight Comprise on a Closed Shop, New York Times, Feb. 19, 1942, pp. 1, 12.
3 Steel Companies Fight Closed Shop, New York Times, Feb. 19, 1942, p. 12.

23

24
The Role of Organized Labor in Winning the War. Taylor began by praising the union
officers self-discipline. We on the War Labor Board have seen practical demonstrations of
this [restraint] nearly every day during the past three and one-half months, he declared.
Responsible leaders of labor have stood guard day and night over the pledge which they
made to the President of the United States, that war production would not be delayed by
stoppages of work, he declared. There has not been a single authorized strike in a war
industry since Pearl Harbor. But more than that, there has not been a single time when the
War Labor Board has attempted to get men to return to their jobs when the responsible
leaders of the union involved have failed to come actively to our assistance.33
The unions are essential to winning the war, Taylor declared. Total war requires the
harnessing of every resources of the nation. . . . Collective bargaining and organized labor
are among the great resources possessed by America and [those principles have been]
democratically endorsed by the people of this country, he asserted, implicitly referring to
the November 1940 election, when Roosevelt won his unprecedented third term with huge
turnouts from union-member precincts. Many people in the Congress and the press, not only
Republicans but Democrats as well, were calling for severe restraints on unions, he
observed. There are some who fail to understand these self-evident truths. These persons
proceed on the theory that the right of labor to organize into effective unions . . . is a luxury
which can be tolerated only in peacetime . . . that the organization of labor is an actual
deterrent to the prosecution of the war . . .
Taylor decried such thinking. Our country should be backing the unions, not
censuring them! Have those critics forgotten that German submarines are prowling off the

33

The Role of Organized Labor in Winning the War, from George W. Taylor, Speeches and Articles,
1938-1971, Lippincott Library, University of Pennsylvania, unpaginated.

24

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coast of Florida and South Carolina every night? They know that the Germans landed agents
on Long Island. The situation is so dangerous that New York City, Philadelphia, Jersey City,
and other towns on the East Coast are holding blackouts every night. [W]ho is going to
going to inform the civilian population of their duties and responsibilities during a
blackout? Taylor asked. [A] civilian population cannot be welded in a few months into a
people informed, equipped and ready to fight a total war except highly organized and
cooperative effort. Will power and patriotism alone will not do the job. Just as the police
patrol our cities, so the labor leaders police the no-strike pledge, he observed, and for that
reason the unions required government protection. That was the purpose of the
maintenance-of-membership clauses, he argued. We placed armed guards with fixed
bayonets around such natural resources as power plants, munitions factories, and dams. . . . .
A maintenance-of-membership clause may often be such a protective device which the War
Labor Board has fashioned to safeguard the existence of another kind of natural assetthe
trade union. . . . Who in the world are we going to turn to, except organized labor, to carry
through this voluntary program of sacrifice on the part of the workers of this country? The
maintenance-of-membership clause in union-management contracts will put the unions
officers at ease. With this protection, the union can be freed from the . . . . eternal battle to
preserve its existence against attack either from without or from within. It can be free to
devote all of its energies to the job of licking Hitler and the Japanese war lords.34
The union officials appointed to the War Labor BoardGeorge Meany, Matthew
Woll, R. J. Thomas, and Thomas Kennedy--were originally skeptical of the maintenance-ofmembership plan, afraid that many workers wont pay dues. However, they changed their
minds after the 91% of the workers at International Harvester Corporation voted in favor of
34

Ibid.

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a contract included a maintenance-of-membership clause that requiring them to remain
union members for the duration of the agreement.35
Nonetheless, the War Labor Boards four business members refused to budge. Even
those whose corporations had contracts with unions refused, for they saw themselves are
representatives of the entire business community. In the Federal Shipbuilding and Drydock
Co. Case, which the Board debated in March and April of 1942, the four executives on the
Board declared that they could not endorse any national policy which, in their words
compels any unwilling employer to force an unwilling employee either to join or to remain
a member of a labor union in order to play his part in winning this war.36 In another
NWLB case decided in April the four businessmen questioned whether it is the function of
this administrative board to impose upon an employer conditions which require him to
discharge even a single employee because of a failure to maintain union membership.37 If,
for some valid reason, a man wishes to withdraw from a union [at any time during the life of
a contract], he should be permitted to honorably do so without losing his job, declared the
most recalcitrant employer representative on the Board, the president of Standard Knitting
Mills of Knoxville, Tennessee, E. J. MacMillan.38 [T]his [question] should be a simpler
issue than wages for which to find a solution, Roger Lapham, chairman of the board of the
American-Hawaiian Steamship Company, wrote in a memo to his fellow Board members in
February 1942. Yet the truth is, of the two, it is the more troublesome because neither

35

The Terminal Report of the National War Labor Board, vol. I, pp. 83-84.
Quoted in The Termination Report of the National War Labor Board, vol. 1 (Washington, D.C.: GPO,
n.d.), p. 84.
37
International Harvester Company Case No. 2004-MB reprinted in Termination Report of the NWLB, vol.
2, p. 287; emphasis added.
38
In re Ryan Aeronautic Co. and the United Automobile Workers, Local 506, (CIO), San Diego, Calif.,
Case No. 46, June 1942, Labor Relations Reference Manual, vol. 10 (1943), p. 1124.
36

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management nor labor seem[s] able to discuss it without an emotional pounding on the
table.39
Although Taylor insisted that [n]o mans freedom is abridged in any way by this
clause, he made no headway, for the union and corporate representatives had utterly
different conceptions of liberty and democracy. 40 This became obvious in the case
of the International Harvester Co. case. A large majority of the employees had voted to
be represented by a union in the April 15, 1942 election supervised by the National Labor
Relations Board. What could be more democratic than that, the labor spokesmen on the
Board asked. Roger [Lapham, the chairman of the board of the American-Hawaiian
Steamship Company] puts a great deal of emphasis upon democracy . . . I think that the
majority rule is the essence of democracy, and if you take that away you have nothing left
but chaos, declared Bobby Watt, an AFL international representative serving on the
Board. I dont know if I quite get it, Lapham replied. I dont understand you [either],
remarked the president of the Proctor & Gamble Co., Richard Deupree. To the union
spokesmen, democracy meant majority rule. To the corporate spokesmen, democracy was
synonymous with individual liberty. 41
On April 27, 1942 the Board voted by an eight to four to impose a maintenanceof-membership provision on Federal Shipbuilding & Drydock Co. in Kearny, New Jersey
The company was a subsidiary of U.S. Steel and there was a serious risk, as William

39

Thinking Out Loud or the Present Thoughts of One Employer, mimeographed, February 18, 1942,
quoted in Milton Derber, The Principles of Dispute Settlement, Problems and Policies of Dispute
Settlement and Wage Stabilization During World War II, Bulletin No. 1009 (n.d. [1951]), p. 81.
40
The Role of Organized Labor in Winning the War, from George W. Taylor, Speeches and Articles,
1938-1971, Lippincott Library, University of Pennsylvania, unpaginated.
41

NWLB Minutes, March 18, 1942, pp. 285-86, quoted in James MacGregor Burns, Maintenance of
Membership: A Study in Administrative Statesmanship, Journal of Politics, 10:1 (February 1948), pp.
110-111.

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Leiserson had warned, that executive officers at U.S. Steels headquarters in Pittsburgh
would defy the order, like the C.I.O.s representatives had done six months earlier when
the National Defense Mediation Board ruled against the United Mine Workers. U.S.
Steels attorney publicly declared he considered the War Labor Boards decision in the
Federal Shipbuilding & Drydock case illegal. If U.S. Steel had taken their counselors
advice, many other corporations would have followed their lead, forcing the President to
either seize the shipyard or ask the hostile Congress to pass new labor legislation.
Fortunately for the sake of the Roosevelt administration and the Allies, the corporation
announced on May 8th that they would institute a maintenance-of-membership program at
the New Jersey docks despite serious objections. 42
Nine weeks later, on July 16, 1942, the Board issued ruling in the controversial
Little Steel case. This decision imposed limitations on wage rates increases for bluecollar employees at the Bethlehem Steel, Republic Steel, Youngstown Sheet & Tube, and
Inland Steel corporations. The Board also required those companies to accept
maintenance-of-membership provisions in their contracts with the Steelworkers union.
This decision was also split. Just as the four corporate representatives dissented on the
union security question, so the four union representatives on the Board dissented on the
wage issue. 43
The two steel-industry decisions broke the deadlock that had stymied the War
Labor Board. Each side won one case, each side lost one, and the stalemate ended. The
Board subsequently applied the same union security and maintenance-of-membership

42

Joel Seidman, American Labor from Defense to Reconversion (1953), pp. 97-98.
The Board also ordered the companies to insert a minimum wage of at least 78 cents per hour for all of
its employees (except apprentices), including those on piecework. The three Directive Orders and
explications are reprinted in The Terminal Report of the National War Labor Board, vol. 2, pp. 288-322.
43

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principles to nearly all American corporations and unions. Like the U.S. Supreme Courts
1954 decisions in Brown vs. the Board of Education, the War Labor Boards decisions in
the steel industry in spring of 1942 served as the foundation for federal regulation of
labor relations for the remainder of the war, and even afterward.
From the very beginning, the members of the Board realized that they would be
inundated by disputes. After the President issued Executive Order 9250 in October 1942
which required every employer, whether they had a contract with a union or not, to obtain
NWLB approval before raising their employees wages, the Board received thousands of
cases at its Washington, D.C. office every single week. Consequently, the Board decided
to de-centralize its operations and train young professionals to chair its regional and
industrial boards.
The Board chairman, Will Davis, delegated that job to George Taylor, who, as a
professor, was better acquainted with up-and-coming economists and labor lawyers.
Taylor brought in his former students from the Wharton School such as Allan Dash and
Lewis Gill, and other promising young professors and recent graduates from the
University of California at Berkeley, the University of Wisconsin, Harvard University,
and other universities with faculty who specialized in labor relations. After brief training
in Washington, the Board sent their new recruits to centers of industry to work as
mediators and to set up regional war labor boards. The Board ultimately created thirteen
such boards covering all part of the nation. The regional war labor boards mirrored the
national board, with four employer representatives, four union representatives, and four
representatives of the public; the latter were mainly professors of labor economics and
labor law. As the war proceeded, the national board also set up eighteen commissions,

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panels, and boards for specific industries connected in one way or another to the war
effort: airplane frames, West Coast aircraft, West Coast lumber, automobiles,
meatpacking, newspaper printing and publishing, nonferrous metal, shipbuilding, war
shipping, steel, the telephone industry, Northern textiles, Southern textile, the Detroit tool
and die industry, transit, trucking, and construction. These were smaller working groups,
but also balanced numbers of employer and union representatives, plus one or two public
representative.
Taylor appointed their most promising young staffers as chairmen of the regional
war labor boardSaul Wallen to Boston, Ted Kheel to New York, Lew Gill to
Cleveland, and Clark Kerr to Seattle and San Francisco, for example, and put John
Dunlop in charge of the Wage Adjustment Board for building and construction. "I was
scared to death," Davis remembered in 1955, "because there wasn't anybody [who] knew
anything about these peculiar operations of the War Labor Board except the people who'd
been through it. These were procedures that had never existed before. . . . So what we
did was, we stripped ourselves of the young men who had been with us from the start. . . .
and who were really carrying on our activities and knew about it. . . . We sent these kids
out." 44 Taylor moved the most capable one from one hot spot to another, as crisis arose.
These men typically held several positions simultaneously. Well aware of the battles
being waged by their counterparts in the Pacific, North Africa, Sicily, and, ultimately,
Normandy and working under intense pressure, they bounded together like marines on
the front. In the process, a coterie of highly talented young arbitrators was forged.
Sylvester Garretts work as chairman of Regional War Labor Board III
epitomized the group. This board was headquartered in downtown Philadelphia, but was
44

[RS: Provide source.]

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responsible for a huge and diverse area including tobacco fields of northern Virginia,
steel and shipbuilding in Maryland, chemical plants in Delaware, southern New Jersey,
and the entire state of Pennsylvania, including the steel mills and coal bituminous mines
in and around Pittsburgh, the anthracite mines near Wilkes-Barrie and Scranton, Baldwin
Locomotive in Philadelphia and the garment factories in that city and surrounding towns,
railroad centers such as Reading, in Philadelphia, the General Electric and
Westinghouse electrical equipment factories in Erie, East Pittsburgh, and Philadelphia,
the ports in New Jersey, Philadelphia, and Virginia.
Thirty-one years old when appointed, Sylvester Garrett held a bachelors degree
from Swarthmore College and law degree at the University of Pennsylvania, where he
had courses with Taylor. He had served as a review attorney, litigation attorney, review
supervisor, and litigation supervision at the National Labor Relations Board from 1938
until August 1941 under the supervision of William Leiserson, and then served as chief
counsel for the leather and apparel section of the Office of Price Administration until
August 1942, when he was recruited by Taylor for the NWLB. In 1938 he married
another Swarthmore graduate, Molly Yard, a daughter of Shanghai missionaries who
helped found the socialist American Student Union in the 1930s. 45
Chairman George Taylor, who was the guy who really masterminded this
regionalization, said, `Syl, Im going to give you a list of names in Philadelphia,
Pittsburgh, Baltimore, Richmond where Id like you to go and see key people in the
community and get some ideas . . . to staff your operation, Garrett recalled. I was

45

After the war ended Yard became deeply involved in liberal Democratic Party politics, first in California
and then in Pittsburgh. She joined the National Organization for Women in the early 1970s and served as
its national president from 1987 to 1991. Margalit Fox, Molly Yard, Advocate for Liberal Causes, Dies at
93, New York Times, September 22, 2005.

31

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supposed to put together a staff within two weeks. He headed for campuses. I found
Paul Guthrie at Randolph-Macon [College] way down there near Roanoke. Actually, my
Disputes Director, Vernon ORourke, found him. I personally did find Charles
Killingsworth who was an instructor at Johns Hopkins. We got him to work as one of our
disputes panel chairmen. And he quickly established himself as first-rate. . . . In
Philadelphia, it was a cinch. I got Bill Loucks [an economics professor] at the Wharton
School. Then I had Allan Dash and Bill Simkin already provided through their work with
George Taylor. I got Frank Pierson [an assistant professor of economics] from
Swarthmore, Howard Teaf [an associate professor of economics] from Haverford, Ray
Buckwalter from Temple. . . . Eli Rock was a recent Yale Law School graduate. And all
these people recruited among their academic friends. And in virtually no time I had a
staff. Thats a fact. I even got my old labor law professor from Penn [Alexander H. Frey]
as one of my vice-chairmen.
Professors were ideal for these jobs, Garrett believed. Where could you get
people who by definition were supposed to be objective? Who had no axes to grind? Who
had brains? . . . The colleges and universities were a gold mine! 46
Following Taylors advice, Garrett met local union, business, and community
leaders in the largest cities throughout the region in late 1942, seeking volunteers and
suggestions for the Region Board and its subordinate wage-rate panels. He asked the
Boards Dispute Director Vernon ORourke, formerly an assistant professor of political
science at Swarthmore, to scour western Maryland and Delaware for the same purpose;
the Boards Assistant Dispute Director Eli Rock covered Erie, New Castle, Oil City, and

46

Transcript of interview of Sylvester Garrett by author, January 11, 1996 (possession of the author), pp.
43-45.

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Sharon in western Pennsylvania; and other public members of Regional War Labir Board
III canvassed Trenton, Scranton, Wilkes-Barre, Allenton, and Bethlehem. By and large,
the result of this intensive work, Garrett wrote in 1946, was that our panel chairmen
were people of real standing and recognized impartiality in their respective communities
who had genuine interest in developing sound labor relations. Parenthetically, he added,
the recruiting campaign also enabled us to do a good deal of `selling of the War Labor
Board program throughout the Region . . . 47
By March 1943, three weeks after it was officially founded, Garrett and his staff
Regional War Labor Board III had 1,400 Form 10sthe employers requests for
permission to raise employees wages--on their desks, and two-or-three hundred more
were arriving weekly. At that time the Board and their staff could process only 100 of
these forms per week, and the piles kept rising. How could they proceed without either
dismissing justified claims or contributing the rising inflation? That is a dangerous
situation, remarked W. Horace Holcomb, the executive assistant to the vice-president of
Baldwin Locomotive and a former director of the California Metal Trades Association.
And a situation that cannot continue, agreed Garrett. Labor was so scarce by 1943 that
employers not only in Region III but in many other part of the U.S. were almost begging
men and women to work in their businesses. In section of the country where the
economy was stagnant, young people hurried to the big cities and ports for jobs. Lew
Gill, chairman of Region V, told Lloyd Garrison, the NWLBs Executive Director and
General Counsel in Washington, about a small company in Ohio that was turning out
some essential military equipment. The owner decided to go in for employee in a big
way, Gill said. At that time the average semi-skilled worker in a unionized factory in the
47

Terminal Report of the NWLB, vol. 1, p. 635.

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North received about 75 cents per hour. By virtue of some nifty setting of piece rates
for unskilled and semi-skilled labor, the Company turned up with average hourly
earnings of something like three dollars an hour. . . . Our worthy citizen of the
community left his job as a bartender at $30 a week . . . and shortly received his first
weekly paycheck of about $200. This man went to the paymaster to say that there must
be a mistake but was assured that all was correct. Some of the workers were so sheepish
about their fabulous earnings on piece work that they deliberately slowed down in order
to keep their pay within reason. An incentive in reverse, Gill told Garrison. 48 Gill told
Garrett that his Board had set up tripartite panels to evaluate Form 10 claims consisting
of one labor representative, one employer representative, and one public representative,
none of who were members of their board and that the Regional War Labor Boards in
Chicago and New York were doing the same. Although Garrett termed that step
drastic, after several meetings he decided to follow their example. 49

48

Memorandum from Gill to Garrison, July 24, 1943, NARA, RG 202, Entry 67, Box 458, FF Lewis M.
Gill.
49
NARA, Record Group 202, Entry group 194, Box 7, Proceedings of RWLB, Philadelphia, March 9, 1943
meeting, pp. 3- 5, 10.

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Regional Board IIs new panels would require guidance. Garrett and his staff
considered the memos on wage increases that they received from the National Board
confining and ineffective. They decided to work out regulations themselves. The basic
problem in their region, as in the United States generally in the middle of the 20th
century, was that wage systems in industries, especially manufacturing, were
extraordinarily complicated and highly inconsistent, so that an employee frequently
would receive pay considerably higher or lower than that of another person performing a
job identical or similar work in the same or nearby factory.
One example was the Roeblins Steel Company that had 8,000 employees in its
Trenton, New Jersey factory divided into approximately 2,000 separate job
classifications. Grievances are constantly presented by the Union on behalf of particular
employees alleging that they are underpaid in terms of what other persons in the plant are
getting for comparable work, and since there is no orderly rate structure, these cases are
exceedingly difficult for the management to handle. The result is that many of them go to
arbitration, Garrett reported. He impishly awarded that Roebling plant the honor of
being the most unhealthy existing in the Region, with the possible exception of the
Cramp Shipyard . . . 50 Although radical critics at that time (and now too) concentrated
on the vast difference in compensation received by top executives and low-level
employees in the businesses, employees themselves generally compared their earnings to
those of others in their own rank, not the top boss. With labor was in short supply in 1943
and 1944, there was no reason otherwise than patriotism to discourage aggravated

50

NARA, RG 202, Entry 77, Box 487, Records of the Historical Section, Summary of Reports of Regional
Chairmen, February 21, 1944, p. 59.

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workers from either striking or quit to get another job with better pay. Loyalty could not
keep an employee tied to a poor-paying job indefinitely.
Yet Garrett and his staff had to be careful, for the War Labor Boards objectives-ensuring uninterrupted production and controlling inflation--were at odds. For instance,
they had recently received a Form 10 request from a Philadelphia glass factory that
produced blood plasma containers, an essential military item. The pay at the shop was
relatively poor and the turnover was high. The Board could grant those workers higher
piece rates. However, such a response might start a ripple effect, with other employees in
the same part of the city going on strike or quitting to win similar increases. On the other
hand, if the Board did nothing, more of the glass shops employee would leave. If is
problem wasnt enough, the Form 10 from the glass factory was stuck near the bottom of
the pile of requests. 51
Leiserson had warned that without guiding wage policy . . . [d]ecisions . . . will
appear . . . arbitrary and capricious. 52 Garrett responded by proposing that Regional
Board III set up pay brackets against which applications for increases could be
measured. [I]t is perfectly clear, he told his fellow Board members in March 1943,
that we are now faced with the necessity of getting together an encyclopedia on the
various job classifications for the entire region, so that we will have these ranges to refer
to whenever a particular inequality case comes up . . . The businessmen on the Regional
Board bristled. I agree with what you are aiming at, [but] I do not agree [that] you can
establish the data to use it, responded Horace Holcomb of Baldwin Locomotive. Harold

51

NARA, RG 202, Entry 194, Box 8, Proceedings of RWLB, Philadelphia, March 16, 1943, p. 112.
William M. Leiserson, Diagnosis of War Labor Policy, reprinted in Labor Relations Reference
Manual, vol. 9 (1943), pp. 927-31.
52

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W. Butler, the vice-president of Philco, a radio manufacturer, was blunter. I think your
statement that [this issue] is complex is a great understatement. It would be impossible. If
we undertook to do it in just a square half mile from where we are sitting here, all of us
would be working all of our time for the next three years, and we couldnt classify all
those jobs because of the great diversity and great range.
Allan Dash, who had just returned from his job as umpire for General Motor and
the United Auto Workers to become vice-chairman of the Philadelphias Regional Board,
asked Holcomb and Butler if they had a better idea? If you do not, if you take no steps
in trying to establish the data, then the attempt to apply this brake on inflation is
impossible. Thats what weve been doing, right and left, for the lasts three weeks,
moving these companies up, because they say they are low [compared to others] and
claim an inequality . . . What do we stop that? We are on the merry-go-round of
inflation, Dash exclaimed. This is the most important job that weve got for the war
effort, John Zinsser, president of Sharp & Dohme, Inc. conceded. Theres no question
about it.
After an all-morning discussion that included off-the-record consultations, the
majority of the Regional Boards members voted to endorse Garretts proposal to
establish wage brackets. There were six dissenting votes, presumably the businessmen,
although the transcript lists no names. Even after the vote, the business representatives on
the Regional Board continued to object. We dont believe that the necessity of getting
by [i.e., reducing] our backlog [of cases] in any way justifies this Board to use half-baked
information; and gentlemen, half-baked information is all you can get out of yardsticks,
Holcomb remarked after lunch. Dash responded that other Regional Boards were

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conducting research to establish wage brackets. They admit the procedure is rough; we
admit it is rough; but it is something better than we are presently getting. Then Garrett,
the Regional Boards chairman, intervened. Ill admit that Im not as well acquainted
with these problems as all of the members of the labor and industry sides of the table, he
began to show deference to those members. However, he quickly added, my own feeling
is that there are certain industries where we can get pretty definite information . . . Im
thinking, specifically, of the garment workers; . . . the hotel and restaurant employees, the
steel workers, and the tool and die machinists . . . Now, cant we reasonably expect to get
some pretty definite information . . . [there]? Up to that point the union representatives
had remained quiet but, prodded by Garrett, the president of the Hosiery Workers, Alex
McKeown, said that he could supply the data for piece rates for the garment industry not
only in their region but the entire country. McKeon and the AFLs regional representative
then offered a motion to direct Prof. William Loucks, the University of Pennsylvania
economist who was the Regions Wage Stabilization Director, to collect all of the
available information . . . [on] wages and ranges . . . in the various industries . . . After
several more minutes, Holcomb of Baldwin Locomotive said that he would vote for that
motion if they all understood that they were merely seeking information, not setting
benchmarks.
The Regional Board appeared to be moving toward compromise when Professor
Loucks interrupted. He would need more staff to gather and analyze the data, Loucke
declared. He had thirty analysts, half men, half women; however several had left and
others undoubtedly would too. This is going to take too much time, Garretts old law
professor Alexander Frey responded. He proposed that the Board break itself up into

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panels of threeone trade unionist, one employer, and one professor. [W]ith cooperative spirit, he claimed, they could cut down the backlog quickly using the informal
standards that they had employed over the past month. At that point, manufacturer John
Zinsser objected. He proposed an alternative motion to authorize Garrett to go to
Washington and obtain funds to hire more research analysts. The Board immediately
voted unanimously in favor of Zinssers motion, ending that discussion. In the morning
the businessmen had strenuously objected to Garretts plan. By mid-afternoon they were
his firm backers. 53
So it went at the Regional War Labor Board III for the remainder of that
afternoon and in the weeks and months that followed. At the very next week, Horace
Holcomb and the other businessmen threatened that he and the other business
representatives would not abide by the Boards policy decisions. They calmed down
after Garrett assured them that no policy decisions would be made unless every member
of the Board was present; Holcomb replied all members would respect the Boards
decisions. 54 The Board faced many other difficulties as well, including a wildcat strike by
white drivers at the Philadelphia Transit Company protesting the hiring of Black drivers.
The War Department had to send 8,000 soldiers to the city to quell the protests and seized
the firm to break that walkout. [T]he anti-Negro sentiment, especially in its present
`whipped-up state, and the cleverness of the leaders of the insurgent elements in
capitalizing on that question, have resulted in the strike being completely out of the
control of the CIO, Garrett reported to the National Board, adding, The matter of

53

NARA, Record Group 202, Entry 194, Box 8, Proceedings of meeting of RWLB, Philadelphia, March
16, 1943, pp. 3-5, 8, 49-50, 61, 64, 70-71, 81, 86, 90, 96-97.
54
[RS: provide citation.]

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principles, viz., the employment of Negroes on the lines, is one which cannot be
compromised. 55
For all their travails, none of the Boards members--neither the employers nor the
labor representatives--ever quit or refuse to obey the majorities rulings. Aided by other
public members and their staff, concessions by both the employers and trade unionists,
contracts from the War Department to local firms, and the constant reminders from the
radio, the press, and newsreels about the American servicemen fighting, suffering, and,
after the Battle of Midway, advancing, Sylvester Garrett managed to keep the
Philadelphia Regional War Labor Board together throughout the war, past V-E Day and
V-J Day until December 1945, when the regional and national war labor boards were shut
down.
Garrett did even more than that. He also persuaded the National War Labor Board
in Washington, D.C. that wage structure in steel and other manufacturing industries had
to be simplified, not only in Region III but throughout the entire country. That process
began on Match 30, 1945, with the NWLB established a Steel Commission chaired by
Theodore Kheel. Simplifying the steel industrys wage structures provided to be far more
difficult than Garrett had imagined. The steel executives and the United Steelworkers of
America ending up negotiating, arguing, and fighting over the issue for more than thirty
years. The conflict provoked the biggest strike in U.S. historythe 1959 steel strike the
origins of which lay in an arbitration decision that Section 2-B did not give management
unrestrained power on the shop floor. 56

55

NARA, RG 202, Entry 77, Boc 487, Records of the Historical Section, Summary of Reports of Regional
Chairmen, pp. 43-44.
56
For accounts of the 1959 steel strike, see Jack Metzgers Striking Steel: Solidarity Remembered (2000),
pp. 26, 34-36, 45-53; also James B. Rose, The Struggle over Management Rights at U.S. Steel, 1946-

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As both George Taylors work at the War Labor Board in Washington in 1942
and Sylvester Garretts work at Regional War Labor Board III between 1942 and 1945
reveal, the revisionists misconstrued the national and regional boards relations with
organized labor. That history did not consist of a series of diktats that manacled workers
and unions. It was a much more complex tale of interactions, compromises, and
collaboration as staffers in dozens of locales worked to contain inflation and satisfy the
needs of workers and employers, in order to efficiently produce goods needed by the U.S.
and its allies at war. Their success contributed in no small part to the defeat of Nazi
Germany and Imperial Japan. And, in the long run, despite inevitable concessions by
union officials, the War Labor Board did not, on balance, weaken American unions. On
the contrary, the War Board and subsequent boards composed of NLWB veterans
protected the unions against opponents in the Congress, the conservative journalists, and
the business community and--through arbitration decisions on incentive rates, wage
adjustments for women, blacks, and Latinos, and approval of company-paid health
insurance and pensions--set into motion a system that raised the living standards of union
members for a generation.

1960: A Reassessment of Section 2-B of the Collective Bargaining Agreement, Business History Review,
72:3 (1998), 446-477.

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